A Reading...

I had to give a 'Reading' of my thesis project for my teachers and classmates yesterday. The purpose of a Reading is to prove to the Thesis Committee that you are ready to go with your performance, scheduled a month after the Reading. All the music had to be memorized and the scenes as close to performance level as possible. What a grueling, nerve-wracking process this has been. Who knew that a biography could be so difficult? When you're trying to put someone's life onstage, the dramatic element is king. You can't just give an expose of the person's life in monologues, you have to show it, so the audience will care about your subject. This means conjuring scenes that 'might have been.' And then, how do you cover the life of someone who has always been associated with a bigger name, George Gershwin? And how do you draw out their identity apart from this other person? These are the challenges I am faced with for the next month, until my performance, April 24 and 25.